A study by Project SALAM
and
National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms

Lawfare: the use of the law as a weapon of war. –– “Law and Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in 21st-Century
Conflicts” by Brigadier General (S) Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF. In Humanitarian
Challenges for Military Intervention, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of
Government, The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, November 2001.

Press Reports on "Inventing Terrorists"

Summary:

This study, sponsored by two national organizations, Project
SALAM (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims) and the National
Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF), focuses on post-9/11 claims
by the U.S. government that it keeps the county safe from terrorism by
arresting hundreds of so-called “terrorists” who were about to strike the
U.S. until the FBI foiled their plots. In fact, this study shows that there have
been remarkably few actual terrorism threats to this country in the last
decade. The vast majority of arrests in the war on terror have consisted of

• the FBI foiling its own entrapment plots; or
• the government arresting people on material support for terrorism
charges that effectively criminalize innocent conduct, such as
charitable giving and management, free speech, free association,
peace-making, and social hospitality; or
• inflation of minor or technical incidents into terrorism events, such
as immigration application inaccuracies, old weapons charges, or
inaccurate statements to governmental officials
The study shows that the war on terror has been largely a charade designed

to make the American public believe that a terrorist army is loose in the
U.S., when the truth is that most of the people convicted of terrorismrelated
crimes posed no danger to the U.S. and were entrapped by a
preventive strategy known as preemptive prosecution. The theme of the
study links preemptive prosecution to the metaphor of “lawfare,” the use of
the law as a weapon of war, in this case the war on terror.

Statistically, the study asks how many of the individuals who appear
on the Department of Justice (DOJ) 2001–2010 list of “terrorism and
terrorism-related convictions” (Appendix A) represented real terrorism threats, and how many were cases of preemptive prosecutions. The study
then categorizes the cases of the individuals on the DOJ list as one of three
types of cases: preemptive prosecutions, cases that contained elements of
preemptive prosecution, or cases that were not preemptive
prosecutions/represented real terrorism threats.

The statistical analysis shows that 72.4% of convictions on the DOJ
list represent cases of preemptive prosecution that were based on suspicion
of the defendant’s perceived ideology and not on his/her criminal activity.
Another 21.8% of convictions on the DOJ list represent people who began
on their own to engage in minor, non-terrorist criminal activity but whose
cases were manipulated and inflated by the government to appear as though
they were “terrorists”; these cases are referred to in the study as “elements
of preemptive prosecution” or “elements.” Overall, 94.2% of all the
terrorism-related convictions on the DOJ list have been either preemptive
prosecution cases or cases that involved elements of preemptive
prosecution.

The study defines preemptive prosecution, gives background on the
origin of the concept, discusses the tactical patterns that characterize its use
by the government, and provides a methodology for determining the
categorization of a case. The study then shows, for cases on the DOJ list,
the percentages for each categorization of a case, as well as percentages for
the tactical patterns used in each categorization. The study concludes that
the government has used preemptive prosecution to exaggerate the threat of
Muslim extremism to the security of the country, and presents some
hypotheses as to why the government has done this, without taking a
position on which possibilities may be correct. The study also makes
recommendations to change the present unfair terrorism laws.